Rado is a Swiss luxury watchmaking company founded in 1917 and headquartered in Lengnau, Switzerland.^[1] In 1962 it launched the first scratch-resistant watch, the DiaStar. Today the company produces about half a million watches a year with a staff of about 470.

Watch collections

The watches from Rado use materials including specialized ceramics, carbide, and sapphire crystal. The 1962 DiaStar 1 is one of the company’s models. This was the first scratch-resistant watch. Currently, the watch is manufactured with the name “original” in the D-Star collection. The D-Star collection also includes the D-Star 200 and the elegant D-Star.

From 1962 to 1968 was made in smaller quantities (only 8,000 pieces) a diver watch: Captain Cook MK1: with 220 meters of depth resistance, was an extremely modern watch for the time.

In 1990, the company launched the Rado Ceramica, which was the first watch in which both the case and bracelet were made of durable ceramic. A high-tech injection molding process enables the production of a high-tech ceramic case as a single piece.